Krzychylkiewicz, Agatha (1998) The grotesque in the works of Bruno Jasienski, University of South Africa, Pretoria, <http://hdl.handle.net/10500/17149>

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http://hdl.handle.net/10500/17149

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The chief objective of this study is to examine the works of Bruno Jasienski in order to
show that he used the grotesque throughout his creative career as the most effective
artistic method of highlighting issues he deemed important, as well as a means of
disguising his personal view of the world and its people. The study consists of two parts:
Part I is devoted to a brief survey of the development of the grotesque, with particular
emphasis on the relationship between grotesque art and those artistic movements with
which Bruno Jasienski associated himself, namely avant-garde and socialist realism. Part
II is devoted to a close examination ofthe grotesque in Jasienski's major works. It opens
with a summary and interpretation of Jasienski's personal views on art and its role in
modern society. It then seeks to demonstrate that the essence of his grotesque method lies
in the conflation of bizarre events with the scrupulous recreation of reality that insists on
the accuracy of historically and geographically identifiable data. Such a method permits
the artist to expose the absurdity oflife in a world obsessed with appearance and material
possessions. Believing that art should be the reflection of life, Jasienski saw life as a
constant game between form what it seems to be and content - what it really is - a
perception that led him to conclude that it is impossible to resolve the conflict between the
world as it appears to be and its true nature. This sense of the impossibility of orientating
oneself in a world dominated by ideologies intensifies during the period of Jasieriski' s life
that he spent in the Soviet Union. The closer examination of his satiric grotesques written
in Russian, apart from explicitly satiric targets, betray the author's growing apprehension
that Communism, especially its Stalinist version, might be yet another deceitful far;ade
made of promises and alluring slogans. The grotesque character of those works that focus
on the opportunism and hypocrisy of politicians, also exposes the ambivalence of
ideologies which while liberating some are used as the instrument of oppressing others